1Prologue

It was a charming room. He always wrote his best stuff here in this comfortable place, furnished with fine sturdy old pieces that had lasted the years not only because of the innate quality of their components but also because of the exquisite care lavished upon them by the staff. His favourite prospect was right here, from his desk, facing the broad picture window that opened out onto the pond and beyond it the paddocks where his three fine horses grazed. It was pastoral, panoramic, soothing to the mind and the heart. It cultivated in him a sense of ease with the world that stood in contrast to the whirlwind of ideas that perpetually inhabited his brain and which it was his job to put down on paper in a dramatic fashion that would captivate the millions who awaited the next installment of his dearest creation with ill-concealed anticipation.

The computer before him was the latest model PC and the keyboard one that had been ergonomically designed for him. He might appreciate a traditional country atmosphere that harkened back to those glorious days of the not so long ago past when grace and politeness prevailed and the pace of life was slow, but in reality he was a businessman as much as an artist. The fact that he claimed both titles was indicative of a present that could not be denied. And that meant he had to get this show on the road with the greatest possible alacrity. Only the best in technology for him, in other words.

He put his fingers to the keyboard and quickly typed four words:

Downton Abbey

Season Six

And then he leaned back into the pliable yet still firm black leather chair and quietly contemplated what he had written. For five years he had loved this fantasy world he had created out of the strands of history and culture gleaned from family reminiscences and the history lessons of his public school days. He had cherished each of the characters he had so carefully drawn to life, agonized with them in their sorrows, cheered them in their victories small and great, and come gradually to the conclusion that like the reality his world so deliberately ignored, it would all have to come to an end sometime. That was his purpose now.

He well knew what he had to do. There were romances to kindle, careers to establish, an education to complete, one wedding that had to happen and at least two or three others to set up, a controversial love interest to develop, an estate to secure, a murder to solve, a baby or two to birth, a puppy to train, and so it went. It was all there in his head, had been for some time. And that was, if he was honest with himself, the problem. It was all so predictable, if only because "the public" demanded that it be so. He was grateful to the public, truly he was. They had welcomed his creation, his artistic baby if you will, with an enthusiasm seldom matched in the ignorant and fickle world of television. They had sobbed and cheered right along with him, sometimes even in the right places. If it could not be said that everyone loved all of his carefully crafted characters, it was still an accurate observation that someone had loved each of them, and that was saying something. And that same public had deluged him with requests, demands, threats (from some of his American viewers, perhaps it was only to be expected from that quarter) regarding the future of this or that beloved favourite. For the most part he had resisted these clamourings and if some of his directions sometimes turned out to meet the expectations of one or another widely supported plotline, he had assured the world and himself that it was only reasonable that someone of the millions out there who gave more thought to the fate of these fictional aristocrats and their servants than to planning for their own financial future should have come to similar ideas about the next development in a particular character's life.

That said, the frenzy was beginning to get a little tiresome, which was just one of the several reasons why he had decided to pull the plug and end it all with this sixth season. The playful pleadings and hopeful requests focused on the different characters were growing more strident, becoming more insistent, taking the form of demands, as if the creative ownership of this imaginary community had somehow become a public share company. The pressure to conform, to renounce a commitment to dramatic necessity and succumb to the public compulsion for happily ever after, was ever more irksome, irritating. He longed to cast them all off, fling their cherished hopes to the four winds, and free himself to write a wholly original conclusion that reflected his total ownership of these characters and to reassert the reality that they all owed their being entirely to him.

But it would kill the ratings.

And that, after all, is what television was really all about. At least, across the Pond it was, and let's face it, selling it all in America was what paid the bills. The cultural agenda of Britain was heavily underwritten by the American billions. As his eyes fixed on his title, he shook his head. Not much had changed, really. With a heavy sigh, his hands descended on the keys again and he typed a few more words.

Episode One.

Act 1.

1. EXT. DOWNTON ABBEY. DAY.

As the sun shines down on the Abbey at midday, the Reverend Mr. Travis makes his way up the crushed gravel driveway toward the...

And then he stopped. It was almost as if his hands refused to type another word. Was he really going to give in? consign his loving creation, the best dramatic piece he had written in his entire life, to the dustbin of predictable melodrama just to satisfy legions of ignorant viewers who wouldn't know a teaspoon from a bouillon spoon? Where was his professional pride? Where was his inner artist? Where, for God's sake, was his originality?

He sank back into the chair once more. This required some consideration. Think about the ratings. Would they indeed go south if the world of Downton Abbey did not unfold as the unlettered millions thought it should? It was a question worth asking.

And the answer came to him with alarming clarity and certainty. Of course they wouldn't. The fact was that the viewing public had become addicted to the show and there was no stemming an addiction (an assertion his own intellectually sound M.P. and other members of the Conservative Party had been observing for years about those persistent and painfully misguided efforts of the neanderthals on the Labour benches to rehabilitate those lost in the drug wars). They would watch regardless of what actually happened on the show. In fact, so long as the setting and the costumes and the manners continued to give them the facade of the period, did it really matter what the characters did? Well, perhaps some shocks would upset the public. They had been rather more jarred than he'd expected by that violent incident in the fourth season, which surprised him, given, especially, the knife crimes that went on in every community in the U.K., not to mention the bottomless American appetite for such things in worlds both real and imagined. But now that he thought about it, he was sure they would keep watching, if only in hope. (And, he told himself smugly, we all know what a tease hope is. He laughed. There was nothing more satisfying than a self-referential quotation.) Britons would stay 'til the last frame, clinging desperately to the delusion that this marriage or that love story or the other murder plot would be resolved in the expected manner.

And as for the audience across the Pond. Well, they were so frustrated with the fact that they got to see it only after it had all aired in the homeland, that they'd still pour money into their public broadcasting station, still place their DVD orders well in advance, and still indulge in those rather disconcerting binge parties where they consumed the entire series in one sitting. However disappointed they might be, it wouldn't keep them from watching it at all.

A sudden sense of liberation came over him and he sat up straight in his chair, staring for a moment at the energizing pastoral landscape before him. A last qualm of doubt assailed him. What of the marriage, the romances, the baby, the dog? What of the million hearts yearning for a satisfying closure to this most satisfying manifestation of television entertainment? What about the happy ending?

"Oh, bugger it," he declared loudly. "I'll do it."

And his fingers descended on the keyboard once more and a torrent of words poured forth beneath them.